From NEHJ: BC's wake-up call

BOSTON — It takes about 4½ hours to get from
Orono, Maine, to Chestnut Hill, Mass.

Boston College avenged a lost weekend in
Maine with a 4-1 win in the Hockey East tournament championship
game. (Dave Arnold/New England Hockey Journal)

As Saturday, Jan. 21 crossed over into Sunday Jan. 22, that ride
grew even longer for the Boston College Eagles.

The Eagles had gone to Maine on Jan. 20 with the No. 4 ranking
in the nation and a share of first place in Hockey East. They
returned home with their tail feathers between their legs, stung by
a sweep at the hands of the Black Bears. The 4-3 overtime loss on
Friday, Jan. 20, and the 7-4 defeat one night later — capped
by three unanswered Maine goals — were the low point for an
Eagles team that, at 14-10-1, wasn’t quite living up to the
program’s usual standard of excellence.

“We went up there, we didn’t have our best game, we
hadn’t been playing good hockey,” defenseman Brian
Dumoulin (Biddeford, Maine) said. “It was a long trip up
there, and even longer back.

“That woke us up; we realized, ‘Hey, we’ve got
to come together as a team.’ We weren’t playing well at
that point, and we just needed to buckle things down. If we wanted
to make a run, it has to start now, we can’t keep waiting and
waiting, and use the old excuse, ‘Well, BC always does this
at this time of year,’ that just doesn’t
happen.”

Asked what he remembered from sitting in that dark, quiet bus
for the long journey back home, forward Paul Carey (Weymouth,
Mass.) said, “Just that we should have had four points that
weekend, and that that’s not the team we are, that
we’re a much better team than that …”

More to the point, said coach Jerry York (Watertown, Mass.),
“Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to make yourself
better.”

Into the night they rode, trying to leave behind the bitter
taste of two of their most draining losses of the season. And it
turns out that they did exactly that. The Jan. 21 loss was
BC’s last in the regular season, and the following weekend
they started a winning streak all the way to the Hockey East final
on March 17. There, on the TD Garden ice where they already had won
the Beanpot title a month earlier, the Eagles fully exorcised the
demons of that fateful trip to Orono, beating Maine, 4-1, to earn
their third consecutive league title, and their fifth in six
years.

It was the 15th consecutive win for the Eagles, who would move
through the NCAA Northeast Regional in Worcester to the Frozen Four
as the No. 1 seed in the national tournament. Win No. 19 would be
in the national title game, and would give BC its second national
championship in three years.

First, though, the Eagles had a league title to win, and Johnny
Gaudreau all but handled that task on his own. The freshman phenom
— who originally was slated to go to Northeastern before
opting out after the departure of NU coach Greg Cronin (Arlington,
Mass.) for the NHL and Ron Wilson’s (Riverside, R.I.) staff
in Toronto — scored two goals and added an assist for BC en
route to the tournament MVP award.

Gaudreau scored his first by jumping on an unfortunate
deflection from Maine defenseman Nick Pryor’s stick with 5:24
gone in the first period. Just over two minutes later, he had his
second — the game-winner, again taking a rebound and
backhanding it in for a 2-0 BC lead.

It was just the next in a string of fantastic performances from
Gaudreau, who, thanks to his performance in the final, moved into
second place on the BC scoring chart with 19 goals and 20 assists
this season.

“As far as Johnny, the sky’s the limit,” Carey
said. “Coming in freshman year and putting up a season like
this is really unbelievable. Especially for a guy his size, he
really doesn’t shy away from anyone. His skill set is matched
by no one.”

Gaudreau also is the latest in a long line of undersized players
who have found success at BC. Like Nate Gerbe and Brian Gionta
before him, the 5-foot-7, 150-pound forward is a perfect fit in the
BC system, using his speed and vision to overcome his physical
shortcomings.

“Coach (York) has had small guys here his whole career,
and he knows how to use them,” Gaudreau said.
“That’s what’s so special about BC.”

Gaudreau played last season for former Maine standout Jim
Montgomery with the Dubuque Saints, an expansion team in the USHL
that ran all the way to a title in its first year playing in the
top American junior league. Gaudreau, who shared that on-ice trophy
parade with current Northeastern forward Vinny Saponari during
Saponari’s year away from college, said he had never won a
title before last season.

“It was an awesome experience,” he said.
“Coach Montgomery’s a small guy, he played for Maine,
and he taught me so much because he was such a small guy, and he
had such a great career at Maine. I don’t think I’d be
doing as well out here at BC if it weren’t for him and all
the stuff he’s taught me.”

Gaudreau’s scoring prowess led the Eagles early, and after
Maine cut the lead to 2-1 at the 7:37 mark of the second on Brian
Flynn’s (Lynnfield, Mass.) backhander from a Joey Diamond
feed, the freshman put his distribution skills to work. Taking a
feed from Carey, Gaudreau fired a backhand pass to Pat Mullane
(Wallingford, Conn.) in the slot, and the junior buried it for a
3-1 lead.

“It’s incredible; he’s a magician,”
Dumoulin said of Gaudreau, a smile growing on his face.
“It’s funny talking about him, because of the way he
is, he’s just as humble as can be. As good as you see him out
there on the ice, he’s an even better person off the ice.
He’s just awesome to be around, everyone on the team loves
him, and for reasons both on and off the ice, we love having him on
our team.”

The Eagles also got a huge boost from goaltender Parker Milner,
who has been a talisman of sorts, playing his best hockey of the
year just as the team around him started to put things together.
His 41 saves ensured that Gaudreau’s early outburst would
clinch it for the Eagles, and while Maine’s Dan Sullivan made
39 stops in a game that featured the most shots ever taken in
regulation during a Hockey East final, it was Milner’s night
to shine.

“We are continuing to get outstanding play from Johnny
Gaudreau up front and Parker Milner on the goal line,” York
said. “Those have been two reasons why we have been on a run
like this. Those two are stepping up their game
recently.”

If Jan. 21 was “rock bottom,” as York said, then
March 17 was one great height, and the Eagles had reason to believe
it wouldn’t be their last.

This article originally appeared in the April 2012 issue of
New England Hockey Journal.